Black Freshmen at UPenn Targeted in Racist GroupMe Message

Police are now investigating.

Updated 6:33 p.m. Nov. 15: A University of Oklahoma student linked with the racist GroupMe that some black freshmen at UPenn were looped into without their permission is no longer a student at the university, The Washington Post reports.

The University of Oklahoma's president David L. Boren said in a statement obtained by The Washington Post that “as our university has clearly demonstrated in the past, we have zero tolerance at this university for those who would engage in racism. We will maintain at our university a strong sense of community which values and respects every single student.”

Previously:

Editor's note: Some readers may find elements of this story disturbing.

Police and information security staff are investigating after several freshmen at the University of Pennsylvania who are black were added without their permission to a racist GroupMe message.

According to phone screenshots, the GroupMe includes racist vitriol, with mentions of lynchings, offensive name-calling, and references to Donald Trump. @chiderasiegbu, who, according to her Twitter profile is in the class of ’20 at Penn, tweeted, “Black students throughout @penn’s campus, like myself, have been added to this hateful GroupMe. I am petrified and all I want to do is cry.”

In a statement released through its official Twitter account, the University of Pennsylvania has unequivocally labelled the GroupMe as "repugnant" and revealed that police and information security staff are attempting to locate the exact source of the account. It also noted that the account “appears to be based in Oklahoma,” The Daily Pennsylvanian reported.

Notably, Penn is Donald Trump’s alma mater; he was a student at the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce there, after transferring from Fordham University, and graduated in 1968.

The incident is truly awful, and we hope police and school officials find out who is responsible quickly. Unfortunately, it’s not the only racist incident reported in the wake of Donald Trump’s election as president earlier this week. There have been reports of Muslim women being attacked at universities, and one woman’s Facebook post went viral in which she described her sister’s account on a public bus: “I was on the bus and this group of girls from St. Francis Prep get on. They looked around and looked at me and said, 'Aren't you suppose [sic] to be sitting in the back of the bus?' I looked around and saw mainly black and Hispanic people sitting in the middle of the the [sic] bus. I asked this girl to repeat herself and she says "Aren't you supposed to be sitting in the back of the bus now? Like Trump is president!"